


Knife Edge

by orphan_account



Category: Starfighter (Comic)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Nobody does feelings well
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-26
Updated: 2013-03-26
Packaged: 2017-12-06 13:46:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/736355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Abel's leaving, and Cain doesn't know how to deal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Knife Edge

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



> Hurrrr Eli, I'm thinking this is a bit darker/different than what you were looking for. Eeeep, sorry, love! D:

"Thought you'd be gone by now."

Abel didn't look round, didn't even glance at Cain, even when he knew he must have heard the door open, had heard Cain fucking speak to him. "I'm not due to see Cook until 1700 hours," Abel finally said, neatly folding his clothes into an open bag on the bed.

Cain knew that, hadn't managed to forget it since Abel had told him about everything a few days ago. "Ready for your reassignment, then?" Cain asked, didn't add, _you_   _fucking pussy_ , but he hoped Abel heard it anyway.

His hands faltered on his pristine white clothes. He took a breath before he met Cain's eye. "It's a promotion," he said, "not a reassignment."

 _Same fucking thing_ , Cain didn't say, looking hard at Abel's mostly-packed bag. "You getting a new name, then?"

"I don't know, Cain," he muttered, glancing around the room, fucking walking away in the middle of their conversation to go poke around in the bathroom. "Maybe," he added when he returned, a few almost-forgotten bottles in his hands.

"So, you're some big-shot, now, right?" Cain asked, slumping onto the bed, leg bouncing up and down. He pulled a cigarette out of his pocket and lit it, didn't even fucking matter with Abel leaving soon; no one around to bitch at him to turn the vents up.

Abel sighed, hands hesitating on his bag. He shot Cain a look, and Cain paused with the lit cigarette halfway to his lips; distracted with looking at Abel, at how fucking  _old_ he looked, how different he was now, after only a few months. He was so fucking soft; too soft for the Alliance, too soft for the war. Yet somehow, he was moving up in the ranks, being promoted, and Cain wasn't.

"Gonna bend over for your new fighter as quick as you did for me?" Cain asked, taking a drag on his cigarette with difficulty; hand shaking.

"Cain, I don't want—"

"So that's a 'yes'," Cain said, snorting, blowing smoke toward Abel, hoping he'd cough on it.

He didn't, and Cain realized that Abel had gotten used to all of Cain's tricks at this point, not even fazed when the little cloud of smoke dissipated around his head. "Just stop," Abel said. "I'm only going to be here for a little while longer."

"Good," Cain snapped. "Good, I can't wait for you to get the fuck out of here. You were getting boring anyway." He watched Abel's face as he said that, waiting for some sort of reaction.

He didn't get one. Abel didn't even seem to care. He finished zipping up his bag and then dropped it to the floor, taking a seat next to Cain. Not close like they were fucking, or far like they were strangers. He sat somewhere in the middle; just close enough for Cain to touch, just far enough away for him to know he shouldn't.

He kept one hand on the cigarette, reached the other across the space between them to grope at Abel's thigh. "Once more?" he asked. "For the road? I'll even blow you for old time's sake."

"No," Abel said, didn't even break into a smile; didn't even blush. He left Cain's hand where it was; didn't even care enough to move it. "Thought you were bored of me, anyway," he said.

"Can't fucking blame me," Cain said, squeezing his thigh, digging his nails in, then finally dragging his hand away.

The vents whirred softly in the silence; just a small hum in the background. Cain could already see the air in their tiny quarters growing hazy. "Maybe you'll get a new name," Abel said. "Then I won't even be able to ask about you."

Cain slanted him a glance. "Why the fuck would you ask about me?  _Who_ would you ask about me?"

Abel shrugged. "I don't know. It's just weird to think about."

Cain looked at him,  _really_ looked at him because he sounded so dead, all of him pale and limp and broken. Cain had a doll once—when he was a kid—a fucking  _doll_ because the only toys he ever got were the ones other kids had donated to their church. So he had this fucking ragdoll that he toted around everywhere until the other kids gave him shit and he realized that boys didn't have  _dolls_. He remembered the last time he'd seen it; fucking bald because all the yarn had been ripped out, clothes torn and the fabric filthy. It didn't fluff up anymore; didn't bounce back—all the stuffing inside smashed flat.

That's what Abel looked like; deflated, torn. Little fucking ragdoll that had been dragged through the mud.

"Shouldn't you be going?" Cain asked then, cigarette burning down to a nub in his fingers, ash falling to the floor. He took another pull and coughed, throat tight.

Abel breathed in slow. "I guess." He stood up, gathered his bag from the floor and slung the strap over his shoulder, settling it flat against the white planes of his jacket. He turned to the door.

Cain almost thought that would be it; Abel's lingering "I guess," the last thing left between them, like the very ambivalence of their entire fucking  _relationship_  had finally been laid bare.

Then he paused and turned around, face blank.  _Old,_ so fucking  _old_ ; aged years in the months they'd been together. Cain wondered whether he had anything to do with it, tried to remember when Abel had stopped being bright and fresh-faced and had turned into…this.

"So…this is it."

Cain flicked the dull, glowing butt of the cigarette onto the ground, letting it fade to nothing on its own. "Yup."

Abel sniffed, rocked back on his heels, mouth tense and downturned. "Is there anything else you want to say?"

"Hope your next fighter's as good a fuck as me," he said. "Your flying's shit when you've been too long without a cock in your ass."

Abel blinked. He turned back toward the door, saying, "All right, then," as he did so.

Cain didn't know what it was about those three words that upset him so much, why anything about Abel upset him so much after this long, why his deadpan look and little ragdoll body pissed Cain off  _so fucking much_. All he knew was that one minute he was sitting on the bed, the next he had crossed the room and shoved Abel hard against the door.

"The fuck is your problem?" Cain snapped. "What the fuck is wrong with you?"

Abel sighed, sagging against the door, face pressed into the cold metal. He closed his eyes, bag pressed between him and the door, forcing him to cant his hips back against Cain's crotch—just like usual. "What do you mean?"

"You fucking know what I mean," Cain said, leaning his whole weight against Abel's back. "What the fuck happened to you?"

"I got a promotion," Abel said. "I need—"

"God damn it, Abel, that's not what I'm fucking talking about." He leaned back, grabbed Abel by the shoulders and swung him around because the least that little fucker could do was look him in the eye when he was being so difficult.

"Cain," Abel said, and his voice was as dead as his eyes when he finally lifted them to meet Cain's glare. "It's time. I have to go."

The door opened. Cain didn't even see Abel reach for the panel. He slipped backward out of the room and into the hallway without a sound or a backward glance at Cain. Cain just stared after him for a moment, so fucking small and frail, slumped forward and weighed down the bag slung across his body.

"Abel," he said, voice echoing down the narrow hallway. Abel kept walking. "Abel!" Still nothing.

Cain gritted his teeth, couldn't believe that Abel was going to make Cain run after him like a fucking idiot, but there was nothing else for it. The door closed behind him as Cain stepped out into the hallway, bare feet slapping against the cold metal floor as he followed after his navigator.

"What the fuck do you want me to say?" he snapped at Abel's back, pacing just a few feet behind him. "You're so fucking annoying, you know that? You think you can just fucking leave without saying anything?" Abel didn't even appear to hear him. Not even the speed of his footsteps changed. Cain's lip curled. "What, you're fucking deaf now? Not going to say one goddamn thing to me? You're just gonna walk out like a scared little slut?" He waited, but Abel stayed silent; no reaction. Abel rounded a corner, nodded to a passing navigator who gave Cain a curious look. Cain reached forward, grabbed Abel's arm and held on, dragging him to a halt. "Abel, you little shit, answer me!"

For the first time in a long time when Abel turned to look at Cain, he saw a flash of anger; Abel's eyebrows drawing in over his sunken brown eyes. Then Abel jerked his arm free. "Cain, leave me alone."

Cain grabbed at him again, so fucking done with this bullshit, with Abel, grabbing him and holding him in place until he got his fucking senses back again. "What the fuck do you want?" he demanded. _"What the fuck do you want from me?"_

" _Cain_ ," Abel said, and the bite in his voice was evident. "I have to go. Let go of me."

 _"No!"_  Cain said, holding tight to Abel's arm. "What do you want, huh? Why don't you just fucking tell me for once?"

"I don't—"

"Want me to tell you how fucking soft you got—how pathetic?"

Abel's eyes narrowed. "Cain—"

"Want me to tell you what a big fucking mistake you're making—leaving?"

He tried to pull his arm free, but Cain held on. "Cain, I swear—"

"What, you want me to tell you that I love you? Huh? That what you want to hear? That what it'll take to make you wake the fuck up, you fucking pansy?"

Abel froze, eyes wide and dark in his face, mouth pulled tight, nostrils flaring. He shook his head slowly, eyes never leaving Cain's face. Cain was almost surprised; he had never seen Abel look as furious as he did just then. Everything he had said to him tonight—in the past few months, but Abel never looked as fucking betrayed, as  _livid_ , as he did at that moment.

"What?" Cain asked, heart pounding in his chest, and Abel might have been pissed, but Cain was too, fucking  _seething_  with no way to vent, no way to handle it. "What? That's it, huh?" he asked, voice trembling, could hardly keep himself together with how badly he wanted to fly apart, to do  _something_ with the cocky little shit in front of him. "That's it. Well, I fucking love you. That make you feel better? That what you've been waiting for,  _you fucking—_ "

 _Smack._  Cain's head jerked to the side, hold on Abel's arm loosening. He didn't know how he hadn't seen that coming, maybe had been waiting for it all along. Abel was stronger than he expected, than he looked, practically giving Cain whiplash as his neck swung to the right. Cain's face burned.

"Don't," Abel said, and when Cain chanced a glance at him, he looked just as angry as before, just as broken; little ragdoll dragging Cain through the mud. "Don't. I'm leaving…I have to go."

He backed away, held Cain's gaze for a hard moment before turning around. He hurried off down the hallway, spine stiff and hand clenched hard on the strap of his bag. Cain didn't follow him.

He waited until Abel was well and truly gone before Cain lit another cigarette and turned down the hallway. He listened to the flat  _slap-slap-slap_  of his bare feet against the floor as he went down a floor, finding the door he'd been looking for in a minute. He pulled on his cigarette as he rang the bell, waiting.

Deimos answered in the next moment, disheveled and heavy-lidded. He perked up when he saw Cain, stepping aside to let Cain breeze through the door. The room was empty, navigator gone. Cain dropped his cigarette to the floor and ground his heel into it—barest flare of pain before the flame was extinguished.

Deimos waited, watching him, face blank as he looked to Cain for instruction. Cain stepped up to him, ran a finger across Deimos' neck and then gripped the collar of his jacket, pulling down. Deimos gasped, arms wrenched back as Cain stripped the jacket off him, dropping it to the floor.

Deimos swayed slightly back and forth, eyes wide; patient, just as blank-faced as Abel had been; dead. Cain examined the pale scars along Deimos' arms and the exposed bit of his chest. Deimos' shirt came off next, pooling to the floor on top of his jacket.

Cain gripped the back of his neck, tilted his head back. He leaned down to bite hard at Deimos' earlobe, free hand skimming down his arm, over the raised lines of skin.

He breathed in, clenched his fingers hard in the black hair. "Get me your knife."


End file.
